Facebook announced that it’s bringing Safety Check to Workplace, giving organisations an easier way to find and help their people in a crisis.
In 2014 Facebook launched Safety Check, a tool that allows its users to let friends and family know they are safe in a crisis, and check on others in areas that are affected. The introduction of Safety Check to Facebook’s Workplace allows work communities to be better prepared for crisis situations, by helping them locate their employees and provide assistance to them.
Millions have already used Safety Check on Facebook with much success, and in 2018 alone, it has been activated over 2,000 times. After all, it’s also been the top requested feature by customers. After hearing feedback from customers that “current tools for managing crisis response are too slow for the modern work environment,” Facebook decided to add it to Workplace.
As Matt Bochenski, Global Head of Content at Workplace explains, “With Safety Check if a crisis arises, organizations can identify who may be affected, send multiple modes of notification, and monitor employee responses. And they can do it fast.”
Here’s How It Works
When a crisis arises, company leadership activates Safety Check through the Workplace administrator, sending notifications to employees to confirm if they are safe or not. The process has three steps.
Locate: During this step, those affected by the crisis are identified via built-in functionalities that allow employers to import the data of those they may want to reach. This could be “membership of Workplace groups, location information, or a traditional spreadsheet with a list of names.”
Notify: Once people are identified, the company needs different ways to get in touch with them. Facebook says that, currently, the most effective way is to reach them via a Workplace Chat Bot.
However, not every organization has this functionality, so Facebook has “provided out-of-the-box options including Workplace Chat notifications and automatic messages” that appear at the top of the New Feed in Workplace, in an email, and SMS. The features will all be available on both desktop and mobile.
Iterate: Attempting to contact is not enough. As the announcement of the feature reads: “What if you reach someone but they don’t respond? You have to be able to keep trying.” For this reason, Facebook has built “a real-time dashboard of employee statuses showing the history of attempts to contact someone.”
From there, administrators will be able to view an “employee’s contact details alongside information on their immediate manager and teammates.”
Safety Check for Workplace will be available to use in early 2019, but companies can request early access here.
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